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I race with the Fred Swain for/rr arms this wknd, on high traction clay small track.
I'm a pretty clean driver, not many wrecks, had hits from other drivers and no problems... I decided to attempt a triple jump that only 2 people were making kind of consistently. As I went full wood with my 8.5, hopeful of an awesome jump in my main warm up lap, I launched 7ft up, nose pointing at the ceiling while spinning like an ice skater... Yup, landed square on the left rear wheel from a straight fall and twist snapped the rear arm....


I think the 3D arms are equally as strong as the OEM. They are just a bit more pricey.. Now that I have a broken one to play with... The arms are porous and snap clean.. So I'm going to try a JB Weld fix, just to see.. Since it can actually grab into the plastic. Unlike normal arms.. We'll see!

They are not arms to use on bashing or experimenting lines that can cause hard wrecks.. But for normal fast racing and clean racing they're great.. I say not experimenting new lines that could give hard crashes, not bcz I think they are fragile, but bcz they are $25pr + $5 shipping to replace.. While OEM arms are $5/pr

But they do make a great performance difference.. And I agree 100% with Joey on how the BB shocks just make everything better!

SLIDER wrote:Thanks for the update! Sounds like you got old school hustling pretty good! Have you had anymore issues with the Shapeway arms breaking? I ordered a set for the front and rear my RC10! The rear set of arms snapped apart on the 1st flex, the front arms took 4 or 5 before they came apart!

I broke another shapeways front arm this weekend, and I'm not surprised it was the other in the pair I first bought. The first pair were clearly far more porous than the 'newer' ones, so either the material or the process changed somewhere in between my two orders. I hope the quality isn't always this inconsistent; I have yet to contact Shapeways about it. Did you notice any difference between the front and rear arms besides how easily the rib between the parts snapped?

Beau S wrote:I think the 3D arms are equally as strong as the OEM. They are just a bit more pricey.. Now that I have a broken one to play with... The arms are porous and snap clean.. So I'm going to try a JB Weld fix, just to see.. Since it can actually grab into the plastic. Unlike normal arms.. We'll see!

They are not arms to use on bashing or experimenting lines that can cause hard wrecks.. But for normal fast racing and clean racing they're great.. I say not experimenting new lines that could give hard crashes, not bcz I think they are fragile, but bcz they are $25pr + $5 shipping to replace.. While OEM arms are $5/pr

But they do make a great performance difference.. And I agree 100% with Joey on how the BB shocks just make everything better!

I agree the shapeways arms are similar in strength to AE's. They are not for bashing, but I doubt very many people racing an RC10 nowadays, much less using these arms, are bashing. I bought three spare sets of them ($60) just so I could have spares for the future. The material that AE used (even the new rere stuff) doesn't fair nearly as well as modern FRP like the B5/TLR22 when it comes to durability.

I also liked the BB spring conversion; it was a noticeable difference with the V2 shocks. I thought about trying the big bore shocks back-to-back in the future, but considering my RC10 is almost half a pound lighter than a B4/B5, I highly doubt it would be beneficial.